[1] The origins of the Institute go back to 1946, when Christopher Hawkes was appointed Oxford's first Professor of European Prehistory and Ian Richmond the first Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire.
Teaching facilities were set up for them at 36 Beaumont Street, which grew into the institute.
[2][3] Richmond and Hawkes were succeeded by Sheppard Frere and Barry Cunliffe, in respectively 1965 and 1972, who oversaw and expansion of the institute's research and fieldwork facilities in the 1970s.
The following year Margareta Steinby succeeded Frere as Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire.
During its construction a Bronze Age ring ditches and a medieval orchard and Carmelite priory were discovered under the foundations.